Jay and Slavery

Although John Jay’s father, Peter Jay,
was one of the largest slave owners in New York, the son became
a leading advocate of manumission. Immediately after Independence
in 1777, while helping to draft New York State’s first constitution,
Jay sought to abolish slavery but was overruled (see
John Jay to Robert R. Livingston, Gouverneur Morris, 4/29/1777,
Jay ID #2819). He continued his call for emancipation
in private correspondence. “I should also have been
for a clause against the continuation of domestic slavery,”
wrote Jay to political colleagues while reviewing drafts of the
constitution.

In 1785 Jay and a few close friends, mostly slave
owners, founded the New York State Society for Promoting the Manumission
of Slaves (see
Minutes of the Manumission Society of New York, v.1, 1785). The
Society entered lawsuits on behalf of slaves and organized boycotts.
Jay also advocated subsidizing black education. “I consider
education to be the soul of the republic,” he wrote to Benjamin Rush
in 1785. “I wish to see all unjust and all unnecessary discriminations
everywhere abolished, and that the time may soon come when all our inhabitants
of every colour and denomination shall be free and equal partakers of
our political liberty” (see
John Jay to Dr. Benjamin Rush, 3/24/1785, Jay ID #9450). In
1787, he helped found New York’s African Free School, which by December
1788 had fifty-six students and which he continued to support financially
(see
John Jay to John Murray, Jr., 10/18/1805, Jay ID #9603). By
the time the Manumission Society surrendered management to New York City
in 1834, the school had educated well over 1,000 students.

Although he owned slaves himself, Jay had
an explanation for this seemingly contradictory practice: “I
purchase slaves and manumit them at proper ages and when their
faithful services shall have afforded a reasonable retribution.”
His attitude toward slavery in New York followed the same gradualist
line (see
John Jay to Egbert Benson, 9/18/1780, Jay ID #1713). In
1799 as governor of the state, Jay signed into law An Act for
the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. The measure provided that,
from July 4th of that year, all children born to slave parents
would be free (subject only to apprenticeship) and that slave
exports would be prohibited. These same children would be
required to serve the mother’s owner until age twenty-eight
for males and age twenty-five for females. The law thus
defined the children of slaves as a type of indentured servant
while slating them for eventual freedom.

Some idea of the father’s values can
be learned from the record of his sons. Jay’s son William
(1789-1858) was one of the most significant American abolitionists
of the nineteenth century. William Jay actively participated in
peace, temperance and anti-slavery movements while serving as
judge of the county court of Westchester County, New York, for
most of the period between 1818 and 1843. His son, John
Jay II (1817-1894) also actively participated in the anti-slavery
movement. He was a prominent member of the Free Soil Party,
and was one of the organizers of the Republican Party in New York.

When honoring William Jay for his anti-slavery
labors in 1854, Horace Greeley harked back to the work of John
Jay: “To Chief Justice Jay may be attributed, more than to
any other man, the abolition of Negro bondage in this [New York]
state.”